One feature that I’ve had requested a number of times is the ability to escape the enemy more easily. To me, this has been a bit of a lower priority since I personally don’t often face this problem when I playtest the game.

However, after watching another player play the game and struggle more than I intend, I decided to go ahead and implement this feature. So, you will now be able to sprint when attempting to escape the enemy.

How it works

You can press and hold the shift key to sprint. Right now, you get only a small speed boost, but it should give you an edge when attempting to escape. When you are sprinting, you will hear a heavy breathing sound effect. The volume will increase the more exhausted you become and decrease after you slow down and regain the ability to sprint. At the moment, you can only sprint for four seconds before you become exhausted. While exhausted, you cannot sprint and recovery will take twice as long as it normally does, so use your sprint wisely.

Changes

• Pressing shift allows you to sprint
• You can sprint for up to four seconds at a time
• Sprinting plays a sound effect that increases in volume the longer you have been sprinting.
• If you max out your sprint time, you will become exhausted and will not be able to sprint until you have recovered. Recovery takes twice as long as it would if you were not exhausted.
• The relative speeds of the player and the enemy have been tweaked a bit in order to make this feature feel a little better.

Why Are These Changes Only on Experimental?

The reason I haven’t released these changes to the main development versions yet is I want to take time to refine the assets related to the plugs and plug consoles. I feel that the placeholder assets that I’ve been using are really not very presentable on the main development branch. As such, I’m now working on improving the assets for these features.

Once I’m satisfied with the new assets, I’ll release all of these recent changes to the main developmen branch.

What’s Next?

After some discussion with one of my early testers, it’s become clear to me that a feature that would go a long way towards making the game fun and replayable as it is would be procedurally generated maps. As a result, that is going to be the next major feature I work on.

Feedback

As always, if you have thoughts that you want to share with me about the game, please head over to the Feedback discussion board and reply to the topic. I’ll be happy to hear your ideas! Similarly, if you have found a bug, please do let me know by opening a new topic in the Known Bugs / Issues discussion board.